NFL
NFL Week 3: twelve games that stayed open to the end
NFL Week 3 · Sunday 27 September 2026
12
games that stayed
open to the end
Fourteen games on the Sunday. Twelve of them finished within eight points, the most on any single Sunday in the history of the league.
The Sunday of week 3 was an advert for the sport from start to finish. Of the fourteen games played that day, twelve ended within eight points. That is the most on any single Sunday in the history of the league, and it equals the record for a full week at the same time.
At the end of the first nine games, seven of them sat within one score, and it only got tighter after that.
Eight points is the line that matters in the NFL. As long as a team is no more than eight behind, one touchdown plus a two-point conversion still ties it. Those are one-score games, and for as long as the margin holds, nothing is settled. Twelve of them in a day means nothing went quiet all afternoon.
All the NFL Week 3 results in one place
This is not about one spectacular result, it is about the whole row. Below is every Sunday game sorted by margin, with the dotted line at eight points.
Every game, sorted by margin
dotted line = eight points, the gap one drive can still close
12 / 14 stayed open to the end
Two games fell outside that line. Jacksonville pulled away at home against New England to 35-6, on an afternoon where Drake Maye threw two more interceptions and his start to the season went from bad to worse. Kansas City held Miami to 10. Everything in between stayed live into the closing stages.
Four games settled in the closing seconds
Baltimore v Dallas, Maracanã
Dallas came back from 31-28 through a pass interference call on Nate Wiggins with 23 seconds left, and tied it at 31 through Brandon Aubrey with seven seconds on the clock. Lamar Jackson needed only those seven seconds: 27 yards to Zay Flowers, a timeout with one second left, and Tyler Loop put it through from 56 yards.
Indianapolis v Houston
Indianapolis led for almost the whole game, until Houston went in front for the first time at 1:48, 17-16. Spencer Shrader settled it anyway with a 53-yard field goal, sixteen seconds from the end.
Washington v Seattle
Marcus Mariota started because Jayden Daniels has an elbow injury, and completed 19 of his 31 passes for 183 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions. Rachaad White, Treylon Burks and Terry McLaurin caught them. At 32, in his first start of the season.
At the other end Kain Medrano picked off Sam Darnold and took it back. In a game that finished on two points that was the difference.
Denver v Los Angeles Rams
Four times in the fourth quarter a team took the lead. Bo Nix put down the last touchdown and closed out a Sunday on which the pattern of the whole day repeated itself one more time.
What else happened in Week 3
Las Vegas is 3-0 after three games, for only the second time since 2002. Kirk Cousins threw three touchdowns against New Orleans and has now done that in all three games this season, which no Raiders quarterback had managed before. Brock Bowers played his first game after a meniscus procedure and immediately caught ten passes for 116 yards. The Saints still led 27-22 after three quarters, then gave the ball away four times in the fourth.
Cleveland won for a second straight week and sit at 2-1. Against Carolina they still trailed 18-13 with a little over four minutes left, before Deshaun Watson covered 55 yards in eight plays and found Harold Fannin Jr. from fourteen yards at 1:48. Ronnie Hickman closed it out with an interception off Bryce Young inside the final half minute.
How you actually watch a Sunday like this
Anyone who wants to follow every game at once ends up on RedZone, where Scott Hanson jumps from game to game all afternoon as soon as anyone reaches the red zone. The idea is that you never miss a decisive moment. On a Sunday like this one that becomes close to impossible, because there is barely a moment that does not count.
Something did change this season. ESPN completed its takeover of NFL Media in February, a three billion dollar deal in which ESPN picked up NFL Network and the distribution rights to RedZone, and the NFL took a ten percent stake in ESPN in return. The NFL still produces the channel itself and keeps digital distribution; ESPN handles cable and satellite.
Separately from that, RedZone has not been entirely commercial-free since last season. Hanson said there would be fewer breaks than the ones viewers complained about last year, but the label the channel carried for years no longer holds.
Then came Monday
The record stood at twelve, and it could still have been broken. That needed Monday's game between Chicago and Philadelphia to finish within eight points. Chicago played without Caleb Williams, out with a hamstring injury from week 2, and started third quarterback Case Keenum. Keenum had a hand in three touchdowns and Chicago won 27-7.
So the record was equalled rather than broken, by a Monday night that turned out to be the one quiet game of the week. For Philadelphia that is a harder story than it is for the statistic.
What this Sunday says about the NFL
A league can be compelling in two ways. The first is a team so good that you watch to see how far it can go. The second is an afternoon where fourteen games run alongside each other and none of them is settled. This Sunday was the second kind, and that one is rarer.
It is also exactly what the NFL's structure is built for. The salary cap, the draft order and the schedules all exist to keep the gap between the best and the worst team small. Usually you notice that across a full season. This time it fitted into a single afternoon.